Hot Topics:

Peter Lucas: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz failed to catch the big fish

By Peter Lucas

Updated:
07/29/2014 11:06:52 AM EDT

House Speaker Bob DeLeo would be best served to stay off the golf course for a while.

After all, the Winthrop legislator would not want to be nabbed by investigators from the U.S. Attorney's Office the way champion golfer Douglas Parigian, a Lowell attorney, and six of his golfing buddies were the other day on insider-trading charges.

If nothing else, it has become clear that U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz has indicted or chastised more Massachusetts golfers for wrongdoing than she has Massachusetts legislators in the Probation Department scandal.

The score so far? Golfers, seven. Legislators, zero.

This strongly indicates that it is far more dangerous for politicians to be caught doing deals out on the fairways than it is in the halls of the Statehouse.

While DeLeo, Senate President Therese Murray and other legislators -- who were the object of Ortiz's investigation -- walked, Ortiz did win a stunning conviction in the rigged hiring case of former Probation Commissioner John O'Brien and his two deputies, Elizabeth Tavares and William Burke III.

The verdict came as such a surprise that O'Brien's wife fainted, while wiseguys wondered why Ortiz did not faint as well. It was such a dog of a case that U.S. District Court Judge William Young could have easily thrown it out.

O'Brien, a well-connected Beacon Hill figure, was found guilty of mail fraud and racketeering, as was Tavares. Burke was found guilty of conspiracy.

Advertisement

The case centered on the fraudulent hiring practices by these officials in handing out jobs to legislators to give out in exchange for favors, like an increased budget appropriation.

The case was not supposed to be about political patronage, but of course it was. It was patronage run amok.

The fact of the matter is that while Ortiz nailed the three bureaucrats, she failed to indict any member of the Legislature, which was the main goal of her long investigation into Probation Department hiring abuses.

Nevertheless, that did not stop Ortiz's prosecutors from dragging DeLeo into the trial by alleging that he doled out patronage jobs to legislators to parcel out in exchange for their votes in his campaign to become speaker of the House.

Only thing is, prosecutors could not prove it. But that did not seem to make any difference. It was like something out of one of those in-absentia trials in the old Soviet Union.

The way prosecutors attacked the absent DeLeo, you might have thought that he was on trial with the three bureaucrats, but he wasn't. DeLeo was not charged with any crime, was not a defendant, was not a witness, was never asked to testify and did not attend. He did not even hang out in the hallway.

But he was a tempting target, even if he wasn't charged with anything. He was put on trial anyway. That should disturb people, but it probably won't. The system has turned, and these days, politicians are presumed guilty. And DeLeo was going to be the fourth speaker in a row to be brought down by the U.S. attorney, only he wasn't.

What should also concern people is that the three former Probation Department officials were charged and convicted under the draconian RICO statute. RICO is the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

It was passed in 1970 to go after the Mafia and drug kingpins, as well as the crimes of murder, arson, bribery, gambling, prostitution, extortion, counterfeiting, terrorism and kidnapping.

Over the years, it has been expanded to include street gangs, corrupt police departments, drug cartels and white-collar crimes, such as mail, wire and securities fraud.

Defendants convicted of several counts of mail fraud, racketeering and conspiracy under RICO, as these three are, face up to 20 years in federal prison on each count, as well as fines up to $250,000.

This was political patronage gone crazy, to be sure, and qualified people were hurt when they were bypassed for jobs by unqualified people with political connections. It was wrong, and the three will pay the price. Ortiz sought to bring down the patronage kingpins of the Massachusetts Legislature and ended up getting three pathetic political hacks.

They will not be sentenced to 20 years, but they will be sentenced, and will probably serve more time than bank robbers do. And they will be ruined, all three of them, both personally and financially, if they have not been already.

Another solution might have been simply to fire them.

But justice prevailed, and the ancient and awful plague of political patronage in Massachusetts has finally been eradicated. Yeah, right.

Peter Lucas' political column appears Tuesday and Friday. Email him at luke1825@aol.com.

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.